Giving Up The Ghosts

I’m not sure what that means exactly or even remotely but I think it qualifies as a resolution don’t you?

One of the things I googled today was what accent are dots over an e? and another due to a promising but shaky analogy was did Jane Eyre leave the church before she married Rochester?

And then I looked down the page, it was a synopsis of Jane Eyre Chapter 26, and there was a name I know well and thought I had made up but maybe stole because turns out it originally belonged to Mrs. Rochester’s care-giver.

After a moment of inarticulate fury, Rochester admits that his wife is alive and that in marrying Jane he would have been knowingly taking a second wife. No one in the community knows of his wife because she is mad, and Rochester keeps her locked away under the care of Grace Poole.

Unless you blocked it out you must remember me going on about my novella The Poole Obits and the dastardly Grace Poole – omg am I a plagiarist?

I wasn’t even planning on writing a blog today I was quite happy writing a little story which was the reason I nosed into Jane Eyre’s business in the first place but while I’m here I might as well tell you what I was thinking about on our moody muddy walk just now.

This year I have resignations rather than resolutions

I am opening my eyes to certain realities like I will never fucking wear that magenta jumpsuit from 2019 in spite of the fact that it’s the 2023 colour of the year, and I will never dance at least while sober and with a rose the tango, and I will never wear that yellow bikini especially deep sea diving because my sternum’s wearing out the vet said (I’ll spare you the deets), and I will also never know if Freddy Mercury found somebody to love and speaking of ghosts, I guess now I will never stop worrying about the ghost of Charlotte Brontë.

And those dots over the e do not represent the vowel-changing accent known as a diaeresis. They are her eyes watching me

omg is she screaming? and is that A gun?

Happy New Year everybody! And here’s a little definitely-not-plagiarized-it’s-too-weird story if you feel like it and if not, here it isn’t .. and those two dots are me watching you

WHAT ELSE GOES ON THAT I DON’T KNOW ABOUT?

It’s been raining since Christmas yet the water is lower than ever before and there’s a newly revealed rock looks like the hood of a car and all sorts of imaginary accidents play consecutively in my head before I finally agree with Maggie that it’s a rock, although I don’t entirely agree, mostly because I can’t believe such a gigantic thing has kept its secret for so long. We were born in this house and thought we knew everything.

And then around the curve, another.

What else goes on that I don’t know about?

I keep losing them in the fog until I get them again with a crash like chewing tinfoil and then three more around the next bend and although I do not feel quite as betrayed by these, this time I say it out loud.

What else goes on that I don’t know about?

And that’s when she told me Claire was coming.

But first, our beach. It’s mostly rocks but before you picture it, before you let rocks similar in size and greyness roll into your head, let me tell you, our beach is an exuberation of rocks. How can I say it? Imagine you’re in audience at the OG explosion and you’re like I’ll take that one, that one, that one, that one over there, yes, that one, and that entire galaxy on your left, that one, that one, those three there, that one, that one, all of those, that one. I mean our beach was mind-blowing rocks some big as trains I bet but we only saw what poked out like the way icebergs are, their colours you’d have to make up names for like Spriken or Youtza or Lomury, and some so black your definition of black changed, some with stripes like flashes of light and you could see the similarities between them like family, you knew they hurtled eons (also a good colour name!) in one mass might have been their own planet even. And it was only our stretch of beach they populated so generously like the playground of a giant blessed child they were strewn and tucked and any other adjective you can think of.

I just want you to understand the celestialness of it you see.

When?

When what?

When’s Claire coming?

Now. She’s coming now. Today.

We had already turned back, all five of the new rocks were visible, the fog was ebbing or maybe it was me not minding so much I mean if you’re talking about being blindsided, the new rocks had nothing on Claire.

..